The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

1988: DEA Judge Rules that Cannabis has Medical Value

The DEA’s own conservative administrative law judge, Francis Young, after taking medical testimony for 15 days and reviewing hundreds of DEA/NIDA documents positioned against the evidence introduced by marijuana reform activists, concluded in September 1988 that “marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

But despite this preponderance of evidence, then DEA Director John Lawn ordered on December 30, 1989 that cannabis remain listed as a Schedule I narcotic – having no known medical use. His successor, Robert Bonner, who was appointed by Bush and kept in office by Clinton, was even more draconian in his approach to hemp/marijuana as medicine. Clinton’s current DEA administrator; Thomas Constantine (appointed 1993), upholds policies for worse even than Bonner’s.

So. . . if all this has been known since 1975, what is our government waiting for?